LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- School days at Jefferson County Public Schools look a bit more familiar as students and staff return for in-person classes after more than a year of learning exclusively from home, albeit with some new touches like social distancing reminders and masks because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the key feature of the district's classroom reopening plan -- hybrid scheduling -- has posed new problems for parents like Sara Hagan, whose 7-year-old son is in first grade at Stopher Elementary School.
Because her son, like other students who returned to JCPS classrooms, is only in school twice a week, Hagan says her family has needed to find two to three childcare options every week while she and her husband work.
"It was the same if not more than what we were paying before," she said.
An in-person learning center is one of the places her son attends every week. For Hagan, the learning center has been critical because she believes her son's at-home assignments during hybrid learning have been lacking.
"He finishes most of it on Thursday and then he has nothing to do on Friday," Hagan said. "Luckily, we do have him at a learning center with some (retired) teachers and they print out some extra stuff for him to do so that he's not just sitting there doing nothing for the entire day."
The Jefferson County Board of Education approved by 4-3 vote the district's hybrid learning schedule, which has students whose last names begin with letters A-K back in-person on Mondays and Tuesdays and those whose last names start with L-Z returning to classes on Thursdays and Fridays with Wednesdays reserved for remote instruction.
About two-thirds of students have opted to return to classrooms rather than continuing virtual instruction for the rest of the 2020-21 school year, according to district data.
JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio originally recommended elementary schools reopen for students five days per week, an option that one board member who voted to resume in-person instruction doesn't see reemerging during the final weeks of this school year.
"Zero," said James Craig, who represents District 3. "I don't think there's any chance at all."
He believes the district's hybrid schedule for all grade levels is the right decision to safely reopen JCPS schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some are "still a little trepidatious" about the updated guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Kentucky Department of Education cutting required social distancing inside classrooms from 6 feet to 3 feet if other mitigation measures are followed, he said.
JCPS will continue offering 6 feet of spacing in classrooms regardless of the updated federal and state COVID-19 guidance.
Jefferson County's COVID-19 incidence rates have also dropped as more residents are vaccinated against the coronavirus disease. The local incidence rate was 11 new daily cases per 100,000 residents on Sunday, nearly putting Jefferson County in the state's second-lowest category for COVID-19 transmission.
"As a parent, I would like to see them back in-person full-time," Craig said. "As a board member and one of a team of eight in charge of running this district, I think that it would be really unhealthy for us to try to turn the Titanic around again.
"The district moved heaven and earth to prepare for March 17, to prepare for the hybrid system."
"We would love to be able to have kids in school five days a week," said Renee Murphy, head of communications and community relations for JCPS. "Right now we know we have to take safety first, and at this time we're remaining socially distinct in order to do that. This is the best option."
Staffing issues also prevent JCPS schools from offering more direct instruction during virtual learning days, Murphy and Craig said.
Teachers are currently splitting their in-person lessons between two groups of students who have chosen to return to classrooms, and Murphy said teachers can record lessons, send assignments home and support students through Google Classroom for remote students on days when they need to teach in-person classes.
"Our teachers can't be in two places at once," Murphy said. "… We have a certain number of staff in each of our schools that are serving both in-person and virtual students, and so we're going to do that right now. That virtual instruction can come in a variety of forms."
Ideally, JCPS would hire "1,000 more teachers" to bolster its virtual instruction model, Craig said.
"We don't have the extra personnel to provide synchronous learning experiences for them via their Chromebooks," he said. "It's just the way it is, so again, it's a compromise, but it's a compromise that gets us started back on a path to normalcy and lays the groundwork, hopefully, for a healthy return to full-time, in-person education in August."
For parents like Hagan, sending their children back to school for in-person learning every weekday cannot come soon enough.
Her son has a reading tutor now because Hagan says he's fallen behind during remote instruction. Assistance offered by Stopher Elementary in the form of additional reading groups didn't help, she said.
"My son is 7," Hagan said. "He can't even read, and he's supposed to self-instruct? I mean, it's just absurd."
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